Gogoi distances from controversial minister

Jul 12, 2010 - MANOJ ANAND |

GUWAHATI

Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi on Sunday distanced himself from the controversy involving his health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma while suggesting that it is his personal problem and the minister has to prove that he has been acquitted by the TADA court.
Talking to a group of reporters, Mr Gogoi however said that he was going to ask the Criminal Investigation Department to find out the circumstances in which the case diary of the two TADA cases got displaced as NGO activist Akhil Gogoi on Saturday claimed to have recovered the entire missing file of the two TADA cases.
Refusing to get into the controversy, Mr Gogoi also asserted that the minister will have to prove that he was acquitted by the TADA court. Mr Sarma, who was booked in two TADA cases in 1991 for his involvement in extortion with the outlawed Ulfa rebels, on Saturday clarified, “What holds authentication in the court of law is the submission made on oath (Sec 163 CrPC) before the designated court and in my case all the witnesses had denied my involvement in the case in 2005.” However, his opponents claimed that this could not be a ground for not holding a proper investigation into the two TADA cases as these developments took place only when he was an influential minister of the Gogoi government.
In the meantime, the minister created a fresh controversy by claiming that a person offered him to sell the case diaries a year back against a hefty sum of money. “But I had refused to buy the papers,” he said while his detractors argued that if some one had approached him with case diary, the minister should have informed the police immediately in helping the recovery of the missing case diary.

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